The question of a specialist bureaucracy often comes up for discussion – both in academic and public forums. It is quite common for critics to comment on the frequent transfers of officers, and raise questions on how can a person who was handling health move to industry and vice versa. Why are secretaries transferred so very often, especially when there is a difference of opinion between the bureaucrats and the minster.
Perhaps the reason for this is the lack of clarity in the structure of governance. A typical department – say education department – has a Minister who is expected to give his political insights and vision about the strategic direction of the department. In this task, he is assisted by a Secretariat which ensures that there is adequate budget for the department, the issues raised in the Assembly (or Parliament in the case of Union Government) are responded to promptly and questions of policy are addressed.
The task of the delivery of services is the task of the Directorate.Thus the school education Director or the DPI as the post is designated in some states has to ensure that schools are inspected at regular intervals, vacancy positions are notified, in service teacher training programs are held at regular intervals and the general infrastructure of schools is in good shape. When the three institutions – the Directorate, the Secretariat and the Minister understand and acknowledge each other’s specific role and responsibility, there is perfect coordination, and differences, if any, are more in point of detail rather than policy. In fact, the technical inputs for each specific domain are to be provided by the Directorate.
Secretaries, on the other hand, are not experts of any particular domain. But they are governance specialists. It is there job to place the domain in the overall context of governance, and also see the impact a particular policy intervention will have on the other. In the Union Government, the processes of inter-departmental coordination are quite well defined, and the Secretariat examines the likely impact of a departmental policy on other, especially related sectors. In an ideal situation, the report of the inter-departmental consultations should then be examined by the cabinet which is the final arbiter of policy. However, it is observed that the political leadership often spends little time on the policy front, but is more concerned with the implementation task which is actually the domain of the directorate, even as the review, inspection and midterm correction is that of the Secretariat.
If all the three legs helped to reinforce each other, the overall performance will be on a high growth trajectory.
